Pages

This comic was inspired by an experience I had a few night ago. I was pulling into the parking lot of Safeway when I saw one of those gratuitously bright shooting stars. I tried to think of a really good wish, but the shooting star had surprised me and I didn't really have any good wishes on deck, so I wished for the first semi-intelligible thing that came to mind: for the rest of my life to be totally awesome.

As soon as that ham-fisted jumble of words left my mouth, I immediately started thinking of all the ways my wish could backfire and how the phrase "I wish that the rest of my life is totally awesome" could be misinterpreted and taken out of context and turned around to cause me great misery. I silently berated myself for not choosing my words more carefully. I could have used this opportunity to secure a bright and wonderful future for myself, but no, I was stupid and just blurted out the first dumb thing to barge into my head and I'd wasted my wish and possibly also earned myself an untimely death or a crippling brain injury.

Then I realized that I was sitting in a Safeway parking lot, consumed by anxiety over whether some fictional being that grants wishes was going to screw me out of my wish through a technical loophole involving death, brain damage or prolonged unconsciousness.

It made me feel slightly uncomfortable that I'm the person making all the decisions about my life.

Anyway, I'm sometimes reluctant to post short comics, but I should probably get over that because I love to draw them and it gives you guys something to read while I'm working on the longer comics. Oh, and you may have noticed that I changed my banner, sidebar and buttons. At first I just wanted to mess with the post column width so that three-panel comics like this one would fit, but I got carried away.

Wow, I did just the same thing earlier tonight, when I pulled into the local Safeway (though I believe I'm in a country far from yours - lucky you). Mine was mostly just wishing for 'good things,' and then five minutes of pondering the potential bad-things that could befall me due to technicalities, combined with the usual social anxiety, which inevitably caused me to leave the parking lot without going in and buying... hell, I can't even remember what I went there to buy anymore.

I'm relieved to know I'm not the only one to ever have had this conversation with myself. We don't have Safeways in Florida. I think the last time was the result of an eyelash wish or one of those "every time the clasp on your necklace reaches the charm" things.Anyway, I feel you, chica. Here's hoping your life is legitimately awesome in all the ways you actually want it to be. (Hint: I typically go for phrasings like "I hope my life is everything I want it to be!" which, though desperately cheesy, takes away a lot of loophole potential from whoever is in charge of these things.)

perhaps you could just start making a wish list (ahahha so funny) of wishes so that when that RANDOM time of shooting stars, blowing out candles, and throwing change into a man made water thing.. you can have some ready!!!

I've read all of your posts, but I'm not usually the commenting type. So, since I wanted to compliment your new banner (hilarious and adorable!), I felt like I should also take this rare opportunity to tell you how very much I love your site. :D

love this. i have been specifying elaborate prevention of exactly these kinds of loopholes since i was a small child wishing on dandelion fluff, backwards necklaces, shooting stars, wishbones, hay trucks (yes.), etc. i would still be thinking up possible pitfalls for days and amending wishes to cover my bases. when my age was still in the single digits. i refuse to think too hard about what this says about me.

I know this is going to sound morbid, but it's not. Just practical. I always wish that I'll die before my husband. Because I don't want to end up taking care of him, too. Feeding myself is hard enough. Plus, he's really whiny when he's sick.

Yay, Allie! A friend of mine turned me on to your blog a week or so ago. Since then, I have been voraciously reading as much of your blog as I could as I eagerly awaited a new update... I'm somewhere in December 2009.

I'm so hyped to see a new post... and also, next time you should just wish that you get all your wishes. Then you could wish for more wishes to correct the wishes that don't go your way. Genius.

I just don't wish anymore because if I've learned anything from movies with 3 wishes, the good selfish ones always come back to bite you in the ass. Like wishing for infinite money or something, you'll get the money, but like, all your friends hate you. Or does that just naturally happen when you get a lot of money? I wouldn't know. Ramble.

Update the awesome button! Hark A Vagrant is still totally awesome, but I need new awesome.

Wallflower - Yes :) I made the other blog to give myself the option of adding static pages in more/different ways than blogger allows. For example, now I can post blown-up images or hidden pages without having them appear in the "pages" section here or the lineup of old posts.

So the most prominent part of this post for me was the mention of Safeway. I realize the weird randomness of this - but the way my brain works is not exactly linear and tends to veer at the slightest things.

So anyways, I saw Safeway. I used to live in Washington, where Safeways exist. Now I am down in California, where Safeways become Vons (same store, owned by same company, different name for unknown reason). I prefer the name Safeway - I don't know why. This is exacerbated by the fact that a Vons store recently decided to re-build/modernize one of their locations, which ended in the eviction of a much-treasured local breakfast spot called Chester Drawers - which, to say the least, royally pissed off me and my husband. (What exactly does it mean to be "royally" pissed off?)

OMG I love this! Every time I make a wish, whether it be on a star or weed, I go through a series of worst case scenarios. (I even do it when I pray, I know God isn't a dick, but I still worry about loopholes) O_O

Allie, the gatherer of misfits. I once again thought I was the only one to panic over the possible loopholes in my wishes. "Normal" needs to be tossed out of the dictionary. Well, no, I guess it doesn't. "Zero" is nonexistent, too, but we still need a word for it...

I don't like having to scroll horizontally because my substandard mouse button at work doesn't let me do so with ease, and so I have to HOLD DOWN MY FINGER in order to see what you have for me on the sidebar and this causes me rage.

(But I still love you. In a completely non-creepy way, if there is such a thing on the Internet.)

I DID notice the new banner, yay Special Dog! And I like the comic and like the comment even better ("It made me feel slightly uncomfortable that I'm the person making all the decisions about my life." tell it, sister!) and goodness, if you're making short comics and want to post them, we sure want to see them!

I've had the same stock wish since I was six years old. I've pondered all of it's possible interpretations and it's my safe go-to wish for any shooting star, fountain coin-tossing, or birthday-candle blowing. I'd share it but you know what they say about telling someone your wish…

hahah, I've totally done this. Had an all-out panic and made small adjustments to wishes...makes me feel kinda dumb. I really like your blog, and jealous you get to do this and get paid. Do you want to blog as a career?

I love the new top bar - Seeing Alot everyday makes me superbly happy; but you need to fix a link on the side. Your dog post still goes to the emoticon posting. Brilliant as always, girl!I support the shorter posts just so I can get a little smiling in during my awful job!

Whenever I make a wish, it's incredibly specific. I practically put a timestamp on it. Because the imaginary wish-granting deity is a figment of my imagination, and I read that short story The Monkey's paw with the wishes that go so badly awry, so that means the wish-creature has too. My own imagination is just looking for ways to get me.

I do that wish thing all the time. People look at me strangely. I love that you put the Alot in the banner. That is still my all time favorite post. I want an Alot t-shirt or stuffed desk cluttery thing or something. I do look forward to your posts.

This totally makes me think of that movie with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley... she's the devil and makes all his wishes backfire; he's gay, tiny penis, etc. It's one of those "awesomely stupid" movies :)

I do this all the time. The worst is when I start panicking about all the horrible things that can happen to my family, and then my boyfriend walks in and wants to know why I'm so freaked out. It is impossible to explain, and regularly messes with my life.

I love your choice of title for your extra-wide Hyperbole; Hyperbole and Nine-Eighths, just by the by. And the new layout; fresh and clean, unlike that old loser layout which was so grungy no one could see anything at all. Stupid old layout. I bet it never saw this revolution coming.

... Oh, you mean you've just made a few changes to the layout? More like a face-lift than a replacement? And the very same layout now recovering from invasive plastic surgery just heard my insults? Oh well, at least it's probably still too drugged up to do anything about it. Ha, stupid lay -

I needed a place to stay during a long stretch of travel, but every hotel was booked in this town I was in, so at the LAST one I could find driving around, I wished before I entered that they would have a room available and that it would be under X amount of dollars. I go in, they have only one room left, it's exactly one dollar under the amount I had hoped for...but it had been a smoking room, smelled terrible, barely passed for clean, and the bathroom amounted to a rickety closet that happened to have plumbing. I realized as I entered I had gotten /exactly/ what I'd wished for and been screwed on just about everything else.

When I make a wish now, I pretty much pretend I'm writing a legal document. It takes a while.

i have done this SO MANY TIMES, and spent hours of time pondering what exactly i would wish that would most minimize the odds of me getting cosmically screwed over. in fact, i kind of gave up wishing on things for awhile, out of a deep paranoia of invoking ironic disaster/destruction.

Allie,I started reading your blog a couple of months ago, and I've been ~traveling back in time~ reading your older posts. It is such a pleasure to see how your writing has evolved over time. You have clearly become sharper and more confident in your craft through blogging. Your writing was funny to begin with, but you've really improved, and it's so great to see that.

I encourage you to keep at it! You're so good now, I'm excited to see where you go in the future. You're on the right track for sure so don't stop now!

I just felt like telling you that because I write sometimes as well and it can be very discouraging. But what you're doing is clearly awesome. Thanks for keeping me company this summer, I definitely needed it. I'll be taking your blog with me into the fall. ^_^

I once spent an evening critiquing a list of "wishes" suggested by some advertisement in the back of a magazine that let you pick 5 wishes for $29.95 or whatever. It was crazy how many would come true if the person died soon.

What an awesome first comment I just made. It's barely comprehensible.

Whenever "shooting stars" appear, my initial childish reaction is to make a wish on it. But life experience has taught me that almost 95% of those stars were actually 747's, and I have just wished for an airplane to grant me peace and serenity, and 20 bucks. This always leads to a crushing blow that lasts approximately 13 hours, until I think to myself, "self, perhaps there was a shooting star BEHIND the 747, and your wish was heard after all." And then I sit around for a while expecting to find 20 bucks.

I just stumbled across this blog last night, in the midst of hiding from bills and sleep, and I have to say I find it disturbing that you seem to be inside my own head (or vice versa). I have to wonder if either I am in fact writing this in my sleep (unlikely because I don't sleep much, and I don't see me getting MORE ambitious while it is happening, also I have some kick-ass dreams that don't usually involve knowing how to do things like actually blog), or if we are psychically connected and one of us is living vicariously through the other. I should mention the other thing I do while not sleeping is watch reruns of Medium, because it comes on at 12:30 and 1:30, so I have a rudimentary knowledge of these kinds of things. Can you let me know if I am in fact living vicariously through you? Because I won't mind, it will make the boring parts of my life that much more awesome OH MY GOD it's true. Don't you see? I must have been a car in a Safeway parking lot at some point, and made a wish on a shooting star for the rest of my life to be totally awesome, and the star knew that that was impossible, and the only solution was for me to unknowingly start being a whole other person who was more awesome than me! Clearly this is the only logical explanation. AND clearly you have become aware of my presence in your head, thinking your thoughts, and you reversed the process while I was asleep and found out when the initial link occurred, and wrote this post knowing that I would get up this morning and stumble blearily to my computer and be IRRESISTIBLY COMPELLED to read it before I even checked my Dear Abbys, and that I would then KNOW. And know that you knew. But why? Are you telling me that you are OK with being my mental conjoined twin? Or are you hoping that awareness will break the bond? Or, did I in fact die that night in the Safeway parking lot, and start haunting you because you are the only one who can see me, and this is your way of gently reminding me, in hopes that I can now let go and move on? That kind of thing happens all the time on Medium. Please let me know ASAP because I really think I'm on to something here.

I love the comics! Short ones, long ones, they're all awesome and I'm totally taking notes about how to convey emotions via MS Paint. (only in my case, I would like to embroider comics - of my own design - on a handkerchief (yes, I know that is totally crazy) so I'm reading your blog trying to figure out what's funniest in one panel and how to translate that into satin stitch.)

It's good that you are thinking of all these contingencies - shooting stars do really like to screw people over. Just make sure to put it all in a contract, get it signed, witnessed and notarized...because you never know.

Are you a lawyer? Were you one in a former life? This illustrates succinctly why it is hard to be (a) a good lawyer and (b) happy. Anyway, thanks for allowing us to commiserate. P.S. Your comics and blog posts are wonderful!

oh i love the short comic! keep those coming! i love you too. i know a lot (alot?) of your fans say this, but truly seriously, sometimes i feel like you're inside my brain. it's amazing. and creepy. but definately awesome!! it was honestly a gift to find your blog last month, and to know there really are other "fantastic" people like me in this world!!!

I Will forever be in awe of your ability to read so many other people's minds. (You rule!!)I do the exact same thing, but I'm afraid that if I'd wish I could be a beautiful, perfect looking woman, I'd be turned into a mannequin or a Barbie. Talk about FML...

"It made me feel slightly uncomfortable that I'm the person making all the decisions about my life."

Totally with you on this one. My life decisions are based around what I find on the underside of my Magic Hat beer caps. "Remember the dinosaurs" probably isn't the best advice when deciding what car to buy, but I bet I'm safer from T-Rex in my Humvee than I would be in a Prius.

Like the idea of short comics. This one makes me wonder if we weren't in the same brain at the same time, I swear this JUST happened to me...though I was sitting at home reading one of those dumb "Make a wish" emails. Everything has a cost...the butterfly effect and all that. I believe the wish granting genie is a class A dickhead.

this is an anxiety i battle with at every chance sighting of 11:11. i am struck with panic when i realize my wish can be misinterpreted and scramble to word it correctly before it switches to 11:12.when i fail to meet my deadline, i hang my head and vow to be better prepared next time.

Are you, like, my long-lost sister or something? Nearly everything you write is something I can relate to. Ever since I read "The Monkey's Paw" and similar stories when I was a kid, I've been paranoid about carefully phrasing my wishes in a way that won't backfire on me.

However, I'd always been told that in order for a wish on a shooting star to be effective, you have to make the wish before the star has vanished...which is why I usually end up frantically thinking something simple like "LOVE!" or "HAPPY!" in the brief second I have.

Hey Allie! I doubt you'll even see this because I know you do read your comments but there's a fuckload already and you only posted this a couple of hours ago, but I'm gonna say it anyway! I just found your blog for the first time a few days ago and have since spent nearly every subsequent waking hour reading all of your old posts. We're talking staying up until like 5am reading; they're seriously that addicting. You are amazing and hilarious and please never stop doing what you do. <3

I never make a wish without adding provisos and codicils to prevent it from turning out to be something I wish I hadn't wished for. I do not trust supernatural wish-granting forces. You just know they have to be bored with unending existence, and as such, play silly buggers with people just to alleviate their eternal tedium.

I love your new banner! And secondly, I worry about my wishes all the time too, so don't fear. There's a whole ecosystem of people out here in the world who shouldn't be in charge of their own lives. We'd be better off that way.

The wish genie IS a total dick, but I think he's usually a little more understanding about one-wish situations. It's when you start rubbing all up on his lamp and demanding three wishes that he tries to screw you over on technicalities just to spite you.

Allie, we do love you :D For my part, you make me think about life in a completely different way, in a way that I'd never considered before, and in a way that I really love, and for that reason you have enriched my life tremendously! I am not very much like you at all, lol, and almost never have any of the kinds of thoughts that you have - but I do have different ones, thoughts that are my own. You have helped me to find confidence in my own abilities Allie. So it might be a scary thought that you're in charge of making decisions in your life, but you have helped me to make some pretty important decisions myself.

Thank you :)

Bloody hell, that was a bit serious eh?! Sorry - I don't know how to do a 'sheepish' emoticon, so I'll just do a slightly perturbed one: :oS

My friend Liz (twitter.com/lizrawr) is cute, and she thinks you're cute. She would like to go on a date with you. My boyfriend (twitter.com/humbugls) and I (twitter.com/SpaceManAndy) would like to come too; we could have a double gayte. If you need more convincing, she made you this: http://twitpic.com/2hjtjw

PLEASE keep posting the short comics. They're just as good and we get to hear from you more often! You're awesome no matter what, so even if you think the little ones are somehow less, they're all effing brilliant and I personally want to read everything you have!

I recommend that you check out the Open-Source Wish Project. It's kind of dead, as is the webcomic that spawned it, but it deals with PRECISELY this kind of problem. It's here if you're interested.

My suggestion would be to contact Ferrett (the guy who was in charge of it, and who is also the person responsible for sending me here in the first place, interestingly enough) and see if he would mind if you set up a similar project in your forums. His LiveJournal profile page has his e-mail address. Dear God I hope you read this; it could be AWESOME.

P.S. Yes to more shorter comics. The long ones are great, but I love seeing you've posted something new regardless of what it is. :)

I'd like to join the legions of commenters who have already reassured you that WE DO THIS TOO. Every time I wish for something - at 11:11, when I see a shooting star, you name it - I always wonder if it will be taken the wrong way. Always. It kind of makes wishing more trouble than it's worth, now that I think about it.

My problem is that I believe every time I do something bad out of laziness, I will cause a bad thing to happen to me.Last month, I threw a plastic bottle into a rubbish bin as I cycled home. I heard it fall out onto the street and didn't stop to put it back. I worried that something would happen to me as payback for littering my planet. It did. I spent the night gassing out my teeny apartment with roach killer after coming home to one the size of my hand.

I also save small spiders in the hope that their larger, and more aggressive parents will see and choose not to terrorise me again.

My friend just quit grad school because she hated it and I actually found myself consoling her with examples of you (because we both stalk your blog obsessively). I was like "look at Allie? She doesn't have a "real" job and she's HAPPY and kicks ass! You too are going to be happy and kick ass young grasshopper! Who cares if you won't have money for food?" You're an inspiration to us all Allie. If only I had the balls to quit my "real" job and do what makes me happy...KEEP UP THE ASS KICKING!!!!Kate

Fucking wish Genie always take things too literally like the time I said 'I wish I had a bigger penis' and the next day I came home to find a severed whale penis on my doorstep, try explaining that to the neighbours......

I guess that huge meteor shower that happened....laaast weekend???...probably really threw you for a loop. Or maybe it was awesome because it gave you a bunch of extra chances to make corrections to your wish.

I sometimes have this same reaction when someone asks me what I'd do if I had a million dollars. They're like "No. It doesn't matter where the money came from. No...it's not from blood diamonds or slave labor. Jesus. It's just a rhetorical question. Nevermind."

My beloved always tells me that 'wishes are tricky things- and they tend to come true to the letter, not to the intent'. I blanme his years of nerdy, nerdy D+Ding, where wishes WILL f- you up.

So our readily practiced wish is: I wish to always have exactly the money I need for any item, service or contract in the exact form of currency I require, without physical, psychic, emotional or legal harm to me, or anyone else.

Phew. You have to be REALLY specific with wishes. If in doubt, get them checked out by a lawyer.

I just discovered this blog this week, and I love it. And I love this comic. So I'm not trying to be mean when I say I think the comic stands up on its own without the blurb underneath... butofcourseit'syourblogtoucandowhatyouwantwhatdoIknowanyway(please don't hurt me!)

And another thing: Why aren't you responding inside your comments anymore? Give a shout once in a while, either let us know you're a real person or let us know you've ascended to the heavens to become God of Blogging.

Loved the comic! By the way, I think they should have a making-your-decisions-for-you Genie.I personally feel completely unrested by the fact that I have to make all these big life decisions (or ANY life decisions) while i'm still playing with Legos and eating from a Batman PEZ dispenser. :-( Dang you fictional Genie, dang you to starry heck.

I know this is not where you were going with this, but, growing up in the South, we were taught that God would handle our prayers much like you described above. "If you pray for patience, watch out, b/c God will make you break your leg and then you'll have to learn to be patient!!"...."If you pray to be a stronger person, God will throw a lot of troubles your way to make you strong!!" And these were supposed to be...encouraging somehow, I think. I finally said forget it, if I'm going to mess with my fate so much, I just won't ask for anything...

Anyway not to depress the whole room, I love your comics, and have forwarded your dog comic to just about every dog-owner I know LOL :) .

I LOVE the short comics. This one especially. Not even kidding you, this morning, I had an eyelash on my face while I was getting ready for work. And I did the same thing as I blew it off my finger. These wishes are heavy business -- one misplaced word and BAM! your wish is all messed up and you find your Grandma died to give you all that money you wished for! Gives me anxiety every birthday too! Anyway... love your blog, and keep up on the short comics (and not to kiss your ass too much, I love your new banner, etc too!)

hi! i'm carron, first time commenter, long time reader. well not really, just found you and have been reading all your previous posts...yes i have that much going on in my life.i like your short comics, please post more.i often feel the same about wish phrasing...like i should invest in a lawyer to ensure that i get the wording just right because those bastard wish genies can surely fuck with the universe and my wishing.all the best, Carronp.s. i like your new banner and layout. you're quite creative.

When I was a kid, my dad taught me the star wish rhyme, which he said I was supposed to say whenever I saw the first visible star each night.

"Star light, star brightFirst star I see tonightI wish I may, I wish I might..Aw shucks, it's just a satellite"

Now my parents argue over who's at fault for my upbringing :P

Also, I never wished on falling stars, because I got it into my head that the wish had to be made while it was actually visible, so by the time I tried to make the wish, it was too late. Then I thought about walking around making wishes constantly and that way whatever wish randomly matched up with a falling star would be the one to come true, but I realized I'd run the risk of looking like one of those crazy guys walking around talking to himself. Clearly this whole chain of thought was thought out before the invention of BlueTooth.

Finally, I'm in agreement with the others who said they liked the short posts. Really, they could only be better if you posted every day :)

- I mean "they" as in the posts, not the commenters I agree with. I don't know anything about them. Them the commenters, not them the posts. Er.. yeah.

This is when I wish for another non-jerk genie capable of granting multiple wishes that may not backfire on what I may say.

This may work if I were to ever see a shooting star, genie or anyone able to grant me wishes. Unfortunately I've never even seen a shooting star.

But is this fair? Is it really fair that someone like myself with never have the chance to be granted a wish simply because I don't live near genies or do not see shooting stars, ever. No, I didn't think so either.

Although, I'm not sure as to how I would overcome that. We could capture a shooting star but I doubt I have a rope large enough for that...

If wishing for another non-jerk genie is legal in the wishing-for-genie-laws. There is also a problem with this current genie being such a jerk that his idea of a non-jerk may be himself. Thus backfiring on my wish that I assumed was unable to be backfired, ever.Run, that's what I would do if I ever saw a genie/shooting star. They're only a recipe for disaster.